1421-1737

No face has ever captivated so many for so long. Every year more than nine million visitors trek to her portrait in the Louvre. Yet while everyone recognizes her smile, hardly anyone knows her story. This book rests on the premise that the woman in the Mona Lisa is indeed the person identified in its earliest description: Lisa Gherardini (1479-1542), wife of the Florence merchant Francesco del Giocondo. Descended from ancient nobles, she gave birth to six children and died at age sixty-three. Her life spanned the most tumultuous chapters in the history of Florence, decades of war, rebellion, invasion, siege, and conquest--and of the greatest artistic outpouring the world has ever seen. Her story creates an extraordinary tapestry of Renaissance Florence, inhabited by larger-than-legend figures such as Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Machiavelli.

A comprehensive biography of Lorenzo de'Medici, Italian statesman and ruler of the Florentine Republic during the Italian Renaissance.

Collects Anne Rice's "Pandora," in which an ancient vampire shares her experiences since her days as one of the living during the time of Christ before being changed into the undead; and "Vittorio, the Vampire," in which a five-hundred-year-old vampire relates how he was seduced, at the age of sixteen, by Ursula, a supernatural creature who saved him from being killed.

Presents a comprehensive study of the Medici family that helped shape fifteenth-century Florence, Italy, and describes the power struggles, wars, and violence that occurred during this time.

A fictionalized biography that describes the life of Elisabetta, the woman who posed for Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting, the Mona Lisa.

Lauro Martines presents a new analysis of the life of fifteenth-century Italian preacher Savonarola and his impact on the Renaissance.

Alessandra Cecchi becomes enchanted with a young painter her father has brought back from nortern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family's Florentine palazzo, but their relationship is interrupted when Alessandra's parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy older man.